Indian call centre staff nicked for fraud

Three workers from an Indian call centre have been arrested for defrauding US bank customers.

In total twelve people have been arrested for cheating Citibank customers out of $350,000. Three of the men worked for Mphasis, an offshoring firm which runs call centres in Bangalore and Pune.

They are accused of charming PIN numbers out of customers and using them to transfer funds illegally, according to AP. Customers noticed the dodgy transfers and complained to Citibank, which traced the problem back to Pune. Bank officials then contacted the police.

There have been concerns that offshoring business services increases the danger of fraud. The fact that this scam relied on old skool social hacking - getting customers to tell you their PIN number - may reassure some.

The team were in the process of transferring another raft of funds when they were arrested by Pune's Cyber Crime unit. The men have been remanded in custody until April 11.

Mphasis, quoted by AP, said: "While we are unhappy with the incident itself, we are at the same time quite pleased that detection systems worked and that there was swift, coordinated information exchange between the affected parties." ®